Michael Connelly - The Late Show

“I don’t know, man,” Nettles whined. “How am I supposed to remember addresses?”

“Think,” Compton said. “You must have some idea what houses you hit. Start with the gun you were carrying. The Glock model seventeen. You must’ve liked it, because you didn’t pawn it. Where’d that come from?”

Nettles leaned forward and put the elbow of his free arm down on the table. He used his free hand to work his jaw like The Thinker as he considered the question.

“Well first of all, all three of those guns came from the same house,” he finally said. “I just don’t remember the fucking address. Don’t you people get burglary reports for these things?”

Compton ignored the question.

“What about the street?” he asked. “Do you remember the street name?”

“No, I don’t remember any street name,” Nettles said.

Ballard had connected six of the credit cards found in Nettles’s room at the Siesta Village with burglary reports where no firearms were reported as taken. This meant those victims had either lied about the guns or there was at least one burglary committed by Nettles that was not reported — most likely because a murder weapon had been stolen. The six known cases had all been located on streets a few blocks from the Siesta Village, creating a pattern extending north, east, and west from the motel.

There was no freeway or other impediment to accessing the neighborhood south of the motel, and yet none of the known burglaries had occurred there. This told Ballard that the house they were looking for might be south.

“Did you ever hit any houses south of the motel where you were staying?” Ballard asked.

“South?” Nettles responded. “Uh, yeah, I hit south.”

Compton threw her a look. She wasn’t supposed to ask the questions. But she continued the line of inquiry.

“Okay, how many times did you go south?”

“Once or twice. The houses that way weren’t as nice. People had junk.”

“When did you hit down there?”

“When I first started.”

“Okay, according to the motel, you had been there nine days before your arrest. So in the first couple days, you went south?”

“I guess so.”

“How long have you had the guns?”

“It was one of the first ones.”

“From south of the motel?”

“Yeah, I guess. I think it was the second. Yeah, the second. The guy thought he was real fucking clever hiding the guns behind the books on his shelves, but I always knock the books off the shelves. Right to the floor. People hide all kinds of good shit behind the books. That’s how I found the guns.”

Ballard took out her phone and went to the GPS app. She pulled up a map centered on Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilton Place, where the Siesta Village motel was located. She started reading off the names of streets to the south. Saint Andrews, Western, Ridgewood, Romaine — Nettles kept shaking his head until she came to Sierra Vista.

“Wait,” he said. “Sierra Vista. That sounds familiar. I think that’s it.”

“What did the house look like?” Ballard asked.

“I don’t know, it looked like a house.”

“Did it have a garage?”

“Yeah, a garage in the back. Separate.”

“One floor, two floors?”

“One. I don’t fuck around with two-story jobs.”

“Okay, was it brick, wood structure, what?”

“Not brick.”

“How’d you get in?”

“I went in the backyard, and popped a slider by the pool.”

“Okay, so there was a pool.”

“Yeah, next to the garage.”

“So there was a gate, then? Like a fence around the pool?”

“The whole backyard. It was locked and I climbed over.”

“Was it a wall or a fence?”

“Fence.”

“What color was the fence?”

“It was like gray. Stained gray.”

“How’d you know nobody was home?”

“I was parked on the street and I saw the guy leave.”

“In a car?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of car? What color?”

“It was a Camaro. Yellow. I remember the car. Cool car. I wanted that car.”

“How’d you know the place was empty? Just because the guy drove off didn’t mean the house wasn’t full with a wife and kids.”

“I know, I always knock on the front door. I have a work shirt with my name on the pocket. I act like I’m a gas inspector looking for a leak. If somebody answers, I just go through the motions and go to the next one.”

“So, what did the front door look like?” she asked.

“Uh, it was yellow,” Nettles said. “Yeah, yellow. I remember because it was like the car. The dude liked yellow.”

Ballard and Compton exchanged a look, though they said nothing. They had what they needed for now. A yellow door and yellow car on Sierra Vista. It wouldn’t be hard to find.

There was no yellow door on Sierra Vista. Ballard and Compton drove up and down its four-block stretch four times in the Taurus but saw no door painted yellow.

“You think Nettles intentionally fucked us?” Ballard asked.

“If he did, he only fucked himself,” Compton said. “The deal is based on results.”

Compton turned and looked out the side window, a sign to Ballard that he was holding something back.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Come on, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, maybe you should have stuck with the plan and let me handle the questions.”

“You were taking too long and I got him describing the house. Don’t pout.”

“I’m not pouting, Renée. But here we are, Sierra Vista. Where’s the yellow door?”

He gestured through the windshield. Ballard ignored the complaint. It was unfounded. If he hadn’t believed Nettles, he would have said something in the interview room. He didn’t, and now he was blaming Ballard for the seeming failure of the move.

She came to a point where Sierra Vista dead-ended into a T and she pulled over. She looked at the map on her phone screen to see if the street continued elsewhere. She found nothing and used her thumb and finger to expand the map. She checked other streets in the neighborhood to see if there was another Sierra. There wasn’t, but there was a Serrano Place two blocks south. She put the phone down and pulled the car away from the curb.

“Where are we going?” Compton asked.

“I want to check out another street over here,” Ballard said. “Serrano, Sierra — maybe Nettles got it wrong.”

“They don’t even sound close.”

“Yes they do. You’re just pouting.”

Serrano Place was only one block long. They covered it quickly, Ballard checking the houses on the left and Compton the right.

“Wait a minute,” Compton said.

Ballard stopped. She looked out his window at a house with a French door with a yellow frame. The house had tongue-and-groove wood siding. No bricks.

She inched the car forward past the driveway and saw that there was a single-car garage detached from the house at the back of the property. A wooden fence, grayed by exposure to the elements, enclosed the backyard.

“The fence is weathered, not stained,” she said. “Think there’s a pool back there?”

“If I wasn’t pouting, I’d say yes,” Compton said.

She punched him in the shoulder and kept driving. Two houses down the street, she pulled to the curb.

“Take off your belt,” Ballard said.

“What?” Compton said.

“Take off your belt. It will look like a leash. I’m going to see if there’s a pool. If I had my van, I’d have a real leash, but your belt will have to do.”

Compton got it. He slipped off his belt and handed it to her.

“Be right back,” she said.

“Be careful,” he said. “Fire a shot if you need me.”